How Long Can The Red Book Be "Red" In All Directions?

Core reading guide:

1. is Xiao Hong's e-commerce business really "no"?

2., to fully promote community operation means abandoning the electricity supplier?

3., the acceleration of commercialization and what problems remain to be solved?

Being laid off, restructuring, and making profits difficult.

In the sixth year, Xiao Hong, the $3 billion unicorn, is at the center of the whirlpool of public opinion and has been tested and examined from all sides.

This intensive bombardment concerns not only because Xiao Hong is a star enterprise, but also a community platform with a large number of high-quality users and content behind the aggregation of such a problem. How can we find the best balance between commercialization and platform tonal?

In the past, the bean was not done, and so did micro-blog.

Self operated electricity supplier once loved

For Xiao Hong's book, the development time of 5 years started with the positioning of Hai Tao shopping and sharing platform, similar to the previous shopping guide platform. From commodity content to paction, the commercialization path was very clear from the very beginning.

The difference is that a large number of users voluntarily produced high-quality notes and re operation of the community atmosphere, so that Xiao Hong book in 2015 has a monthly average of more than 50 times the number of people / people, single use time more than 130 minutes of super high activity.

High viscosity and high activity, mainly female users, together basically equals "buy, buy, buy".

Aware of the demand for goods from platform users no less than information, in 2014, known as the "first year of cross-border electricity supplier", the little red book, which is just over one year old, quickly launched its own cross-border e-commerce business "welfare agency". It no longer became a contributor to Taobao's traffic, but also competed with Tmall international, NetEase koala and Amazon overseas.

In the business mode, Xiao Hong chose the whole self run platform. The platform not only handled the selected products, procurement, customs and customer service, but also took two days to handle hundreds of thousands of single bonded warehouses and two overseas warehouses.

For the small red book which has total financing amount in the middle of 2016, which is only over 100 million US dollars, the cost is not too small. But from the perspective of the Red Book team, it is imperative to ensure that the quality and shopping flow are smooth.

The result is not satisfactory. The first problem encountered by Xiao Hong is that the commodity category is not rich enough.

In the selection of products, Xiao Hong's book is more focused on explosive thinking, some from the community's high popularity merchandise, and the other part comes from the excavation of potential explosions.

The lag of the former and the instability of the latter result in the generation gap between user demand and platform supply.

Compared with the massive users and notes on the little red book platform, behind thousands of SKU generating hundreds of millions of sales (2015 data), there is a serious imbalance between supply and demand.

There are also some common problems of cross-border e-commerce platforms, and little red book has not been spared.

For example, the supply of goods, because foreign brands rarely directly cooperate with the electronic business platform to reach a cooperation authorization, the platform will generally turn to cooperate with suppliers and agents, and for these upstream channels, the platform side lacks the ability to control, and the situation of mixed sale can not be effectively managed.

In addition, the lack of competitiveness of commodity prices, long logistics timeliness, poor after-sales experience, information leakage and other factors have a negative impact on the business development of Xiao Hong's book business. In addition, cross-border electricity providers entered a rapid development after 2014, and the giants came in one after another.

According to Analysys data, as of the fourth quarter of 2018, Xiao Hong ranked sixth in the cross-border import retail business market, accounting for only 3.7%.

In the context of the overall growth of cross-border electricity providers, Xiao Hong's own business segment has maintained a high growth rate, and its performance doubled last year, it is understood.

But compared with Alibaba, Jingdong and other e-commerce business players with strong foundation, the little red book from scratch started in the cross-border electricity supplier market.

Bigger community = electric power weighting

However, the little red book is not here.

With the community as the lifeblood, the focus and sharing mode of platform users began to change since 2017.

The first is the change in the commodity level. With the attention of users, the direction of the selection of Xiaohong book has been adjusted accordingly. The sale of cross-border e-commerce has dropped to less than 50%, and it has been difficult to define it as a cross-border e-commerce platform.

Secondly, the content boundary of Xiao Hong book began to expand.

In 2017, nearly 70% of the new users of Xiao Hong's book were 95, and the younger user groups brought a new sharing mode -- no longer just a product recommendation "grass planting" and sharing good things, but instead became a community showing users' daily life behavior.

Previously, the "non shopping related" information that was hidden by the platform has been released, and the functional color of the platform has gradually faded.

The continuous expansion of the platform boundary means that the game rules of "self run" must be broken. Since June 2016, Xiao Hong has opened the third party platform. After a year, the proportion of self operated goods and third party goods has reached 5:5. However, advertising is still excluded as the red line.

At this time, the most important profit model of Xiao Hong's book is still the electricity supplier. As the driving engine of the electricity business, the property of the real community determines that Xiao Hong book can't direct the purchase of the content directly, just like other electronic commerce platforms, so the most important task has become the basic plate of the big community.

One way is to increase exposure.

At the end of 2017, Xiao Hong began to invite stars to enter. In the first quarter of 2018, Xiao Hong began to put in the variety show, such as "idol trainee" and "create 101".

Affected by this, as of May 2018, the number of users of Xiaohong book has been broken to nearly 100 million from the end of last year to 100 million, and the monthly number of live users is close to 30 million, which is three times that of a year ago.

With the expansion of the overall traffic scale, Xiao Hong also spent much time in user retention.

With the expansion of the scope of community content, how can we accurately match users' interests with them?

At the beginning of 2016, Xiaohong book began to pfer from manual to machine in content operation, and improved user usage frequency and duration by grouping, constructing user portrait and intelligent recommendation under machine algorithm.

In addition, the small red book, which has always been the main player, has also added a short video function in this period, which is regarded as an important measure for the "bid".

Although many adjustments have been made at the operational level, the core of Xiao Hong's book is still the introduction of community traffic into the electricity supplier business to form a closed loop paction.

But in 2018, the action of Xiao Hong's book was much more obvious.

First launched its own brand "bright REDelight" in March, and then opened the first offline experience store "RED home" in Shanghai in June.

If the above is still limited to the exploration of self catering business and channel, then this situation has changed after the 300 million dollar D round of financing that Ali received at the end of May.

The outgoing electric business sector is the trigger for layoffs.

Ali's stake was interpreted as the little red book to abandon the electricity business, instead of relying on the content community to become a high-quality traffic portal Ali.

In the early days, Qu Fang, founder of Xiaohong book, did express plans to explore the commercialized path of advertising, and there will be a great probability to adopt the form of information flow advertising.

In fact, for the UGC platform like Xiaohong book, even if the mechanism of reviewing the content of the platform is strict, it is inevitable for an individual to undertake advertisements.

As a result, the small red book has long been a platform for its own signing of the red man, but for the institutionalized operation of the MCN is relatively cautious.

According to three reports, in March 2018, Xiao Hong officially launched the MCN cooperation plan, but it was rather restrained and low-key as a whole.

After the small-scale water trial, the commercialization of Xiao Hong's book soon ushered in a big move.

In November of the same year, the media broke the news that Taobao was introducing the content of Xiaohong book, appearing under the entrance of the "good things comment group" under the merchandise details page. In addition, Xiao Hong's commentaries, comments and collection functions can also be used on Taobao, and the publisher's small red book account can be linked with micro panning.

Comparatively speaking, this mode of cooperation has no effect on the community and content properties of Xiao Hong's book. Businessmen can only choose the content of the little red book recommended by the system. In essence, it is the commercialization of the "bringing ism". But how do users, small red books and Taobao three parties reach an agreement on the ownership of the content?

This problem remains to be solved.

Xiao Hong's book has a greater impact on the commercial operation of the platform's internal system. In January 2019, Xiao Hong officially launched the "brand cooperation platform", providing three kinds of identity entry modes, namely brand side, content Cooperation Agency (MCN) and brand partner (KOL).

On the marketing platform of Xiao Hong, brand partners and brand partners can share data and information, so as to screen out suitable bloggers for promotion and cooperation.

In order to maintain the community, Xiao Hong tried to form a division between commercial advertising and original content, but can we get recognition if we let users know that they are watching advertisements?

Diversification breakthrough: many questions, expect more

Whether it is the IPO plan in 2-3 years, or the opening of Ali's stake and Taobao system, and the hint of "being eaten" behind it, all the commercialization attempts of Xiao Hong's book this year are all very important.

Needless to say, a small red book with 200 million high quality users is like a chicken with golden eggs.

At present, the two biggest problem is how to make the chicken get more golden eggs at a faster rate, instead of killing chickens and eggs. Two, how to find another chicken that can only lay golden eggs?

These problems need to be solved gradually. Specifically, the status quo of Xiao Hong's book is quite diverse.

First question.

As mentioned above, Xiaohong book is trying to separate commercial content from original user content through standardized operation, but advertising problems are always avoided.

This month's "grass note" has been published, and it can also make news on search rankings and brushes, which has led to a public opinion crisis for UGC's red book.

With the current platform operation and management capabilities of Xiaohong book, can we standardize the management of advertisers?

In the face of large-scale brand entry, how should we deal with the impact of original notebook content under the professional operation copywriting package?

All of these undoubtedly raise higher requirements for platform operation, auditing mechanism, recommendation mechanism and algorithm. Although Xiao Hong has made a good foundation from the platform structure, there are still many parts to be optimized in detail.

In addition, the content of Taobao's cooperation seems to be that the little red book is pouring Taobao's content resources into Taobao, enriching the content and shopping experience of the products. Then, for the commercial closed loop of the content under the original mechanism of Xiao Hong book, is the short board of the electricity supplier maintained in the platform ecosystem, supplemented by the flagship store of the brand, or can it be complemented from Taobao?

The second question.

In the larger red book ecosystem, can we avoid community atmosphere loss and user loss by refining community modules?

In the small red book, beauty, personal care, fashion and other categories are still the focus, and female users account for the majority.

But with the expansion of business in the comprehensive direction, the verticality of content has been weakened, and the proportion of male users has been increasing, supplemented by commercialization factors. How to maintain community activity and user stickiness?

What little red book hopes to do is a "virtual city", with a small community of interest and self aggregation as the unit, so that users can get what they need in the distributed community.

That is to say, the community sharing property will be further strengthened. The "punch card" function provided by the short video product "Hey" of the little red book online test may be regarded as a step towards promoting the platform tonality to the community.

This is the requirement to maintain the user's viscosity and activity, and it is also an inevitable move to promote the brand new commercial engine.

Besides the small red book platform, the new business direction is also being explored.

Not long ago, the online social networking platform, "Xiaohong store", is one of them. Xiao Hong store is now promoting the products of the small red book platform and its own brand "bright", which is popularized through invitation system and self purchase rebate + share commissions, which aims to cover different user groups with the little red book.

The other direction is the broader sinking market.

It is understood that after the small red book landing experience shop, has now opened three stores in Shanghai Jingan, Jiangsu Changzhou, Shanghai Jiading, and these three stores are in a profitable State.

The profits of two stores in Changzhou and Jiading may represent that Xiao Hong can get more uncovered user groups through the line.

There is no doubt that this year will be the year when little red book is running.

In the Internet ecological world, can the breaking gap between content and paction be broken down?